Wednesday, December 10, 2014

New Harvard Study Discovers Concerning Information About Antibiotics

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin
in the 1940s, and it has been used as a poster child for ‘safe’
antibiotics ever since. Fleming’s discovery heralded the ‘age of
antibiotics,’ but new research from Harvard scientists reveals concerning information about antibiotics, confirming that the antibiotic age is coming to an end.

Penicillin has been called better than the ‘big gun’ antibiotics for treating pneumonia and other childhood diseases, but it that really true in a new age of antibiotic resistance created by their overuse? Even the corrupt FDA admits that antibiotic misuse and overuse is a problem.

“One of the oldest and most widely used antibiotics,
penicillin, attacks enzymes that build the bacterial cell wall.
Researchers have now shown that penicillin and its variants also set in
motion a toxic malfunctioning of the cell’s wall-building machinery, dooming the cell to a futile cycle of building and then immediately destroying that wall.”

This would be a simple microbial process that we could take for
granted if it weren’t for the resistance to penicillin and other
antibiotics that has emerged in the last few decades. The fact is that
scientists still don’t really know how the original ‘age of antibiotics’
worked.

Thomas Bernhardt, associate professor of microbiology and
immunobiology at Harvard Medical School, are looking closer at this
phenomenon.

Their findings, published in the journal Cell,
explain how penicillin can be devastating to bacteria — which may lead
to new ways to thwart drug resistance, but could also explain why ‘good’
bacteria is harmed by antibiotics. How do these drugs differentiate
after all?

Bernhardt and his team have shown that antibiotic drugs do more than
simply block cell-wall assembly. Penicillin and its variants also “set
in motion a toxic malfunctioning of the cell’s wall-building machinery,
which dooms the cell to a futile cycle of building and then immediately
destroying that wall. This downstream death spiral depletes cells of the resources they need to survive.”

“It seems to be a common theme with some of the best
antibiotics that we have: They don’t just inhibit the enzyme they are
targeting; they actually convert that target so that whatever activity
it has left becomes toxic.”

Penicillin and some other antibiotic drugs are included in a class
called beta-lactams, all of which are derived from natural antibiotics
produced by fungi and have known bacteria-fighting capabilities.

If a drug prohibits a cell from synthesizing new strands by blocking
the enzymes that build cross-links, weakening the cell walls (meaning
the cell wall can’t hold together), how do we keep the healthy cells
from dying? It’s a bit like treating cancer cells with chemotherapy. All the cells die, not just the cancerous ones.

Bernhardt and Hongbaek Cho, lead author of the Cell
paper, used a specific derivative of penicillin that targets only one
enzyme in cell-wall assembly. Their aim was to genetically manipulate
their study subject, E. coli, to make this enzyme dispensable for the life of the cell.

Surprisingly, the scientists noticed that targeting the nonessential enzyme with the penicillin still killed the cell.
This finding was quite a conundrum. The enzyme could be removed from
cells completely without harm. Yet, when it was present and bound by the
drug, the cells would die.

The investigators discovered that the root cause of the
problem was that the drug not only inhibited the enzyme, but it also
caused it to malfunction in such a way that its activity became toxic.

“Now that we know more about beta-lactams being
toxic, it gives us a hook to look for new molecules that target the cell
wall, the more we understand how these processes like cell wall
synthesis work in bacteria, the better position we’ll be in to find new
ways to disrupt it.”

The problem is that more and more unwanted bacteria are
becoming resistant to antibiotics, and in many cases, disease-causing
bacteria are actually influenced to grow more.

A bactericidal antibiotic like penicillin hopefully kills the unwanted or ‘bad’ bacteria.

A bacteriostatic antibiotic stops bacteria from multiplying.

Simple. natural antibiotics like garlic and onions, basil, chamomile,
aloe vera, astragalus and others; however, don’t cause side effects
like antibiotic resistance, diarrhea, nausea, fungal infections, and the
disruption of healthy gut flora that help to fight disease.

Furthermore, with many antibiotics, sensitive bacteria are killed, but resistant germs may be left to grow and multiply.

“Some bacteria develop the ability
to neutralize the antibiotic before it can do harm, others can rapidly
pump the antibiotic out, and still others can change the antibiotic
attack site so it cannot affect the function of the bacteria.”

Pharmaceutical antibiotics simply kill bacteria indiscriminately throughout the body.
That is how they are manufactured. So, if you contract strep throat,
for example, the antibiotic you take will kill the good bacteria,
lactobacillus, which you need to crowd out Candida and other
issues. This is why vaginal and intestinal yeast infections are so
common after antibiotic use.

Natural antibiotics don’t seem to cause the phenomenon of antibiotic
resistance, and many are simply foods you eat on a daily basis. For
example, these 8 natural antibiotics
could possibly replace pharmaceutical antibiotics for good. Natural,
non-pharmaceutical antibiotics even fight anti-biotic resistant
diseases, like MRSA, and E Coli.

Why use Big Pharma drugs at all? It doesn’t take a room of Harvard
scientists to figure out better options that are less expensive and
still effective.

Intellectual Center Reviews

Intellectual Center provides Independent News in blog format to assist other activists, teachers, and elders with alternative news, information on social issues, and research material.

FAIR USE NOTICE: Intellectual Center (Website) may post copyrighted material not specifically authorized in accordance with Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law allowing purposes associating learning processes. Please be advised if you intend to use such copyrighted material for personal reasons beyond "fair use," considerations, please obtain permission from the copyright owner. Learning processes encompass a vast array of issues of concern and would not be restrictive, it would offer critique and extended scholarly research.

Website may display third party authors/advertising which may not represent the views or opinions of Website or contributors. Advertisements are not endorsed as such and are intended as alternative ways to support the work at Website.